Zutao Ouyang

Zutao Ouyang
Auburn University | AU · College of Forestry, Wildlife and Environment

PhD - Geography

About

117
Publications
43,005
Reads
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4,563
Citations
Additional affiliations
June 2019 - present
Stanford University
Position
  • PostDoc Position
November 2015 - May 2019
Michigan State University
Position
  • Research Associate
August 2010 - July 2011
Fudan University
Position
  • Research Assistant
Education
August 2014 - July 2015
Michigan State University
Field of study
  • Geography
September 2011 - May 2014
University of Toledo
Field of study
  • Ecology
June 2007 - July 2010
Fudan University
Field of study
  • Ecology

Publications

Publications (117)
Article
Object-oriented classification (OOC) has shown many significant advantages over other methods for classification of urban or forest ecosystems. However, it remains unclear if this technology could exhibit these advantages on mapping monospecific plant stands in herbaceous plant dominated ecosystems (e.g. saltmarshes). In this study, we compared the...
Article
Full-text available
Urban built-up area, one of the most important measures of an urban landscape, is an essential variable for understanding ecological and socioeconomic processes in urban systems. With an interest in urban development in transitional economies in Southeast Asia, we recognized a lack of high-to-medium resolution (<60 m) built-up information for count...
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Lakes are important components for regulating carbon cycling within landscapes. Most lakes are regarded as CO 2 sources to the atmosphere, except for a few eutrophic ones. Algal blooms are common phenomena in many eutrophic lakes and can cause many environmental stresses, yet their effects on the net exchange of CO 2 (F CO2) at large spatial scales...
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The replacement of natural lands with urban structures has multiple environmental consequences , yet little is known about the magnitude and extent of albedo-induced warming contributions from urbanization at the global scale in the past and future. Here, we apply an empirical approach to quantify the climate effects of past urbanization and future...
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Although rice cultivation is one of the most important agricultural sources of methane (CH4) and contributes ∼8% of total global anthropogenic emissions, large discrepancies remain among estimates of global CH4 emissions from rice cultivation (ranging from 18 to 115 Tg CH4 yr⁻¹) due to a lack of observational constraints. The spatial distribution o...
Article
Landfills play a crucial role in urban climate solutions, as the decomposition of their “hidden” carbon stock contributes to 8.8% of global methane emissions. While controlling landfill gas emissions is the most commonly used intervention, a systematic approach to manage the carbon cycle in landfills remains elusive. In this study, we developed a q...
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The amount of and changes in a country’s natural assets are crucial for developing national strategic plans and policies due to their foundational role in determining the resilience of social-environmental systems (SES), especially under a changing climate. Many integrated metrics on natural assets have been proposed based on individual measures to...
Article
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Surface energy partitioning directly connects to the urban heat island effect, which consequently changes regional climate, the health of the urban dwellers, and anthropogenic energy use. In order to quantify land-atmosphere fluxes from urban areas and the impact of the level of intensity of development, we use seven site-years of land-atmosphere f...
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Carbon-rich peat soils have been drained and used extensively for agriculture throughout human history, leading to significant losses of their soil carbon. One solution for rewetting degraded peat is wet crop cultivation. Crops such as rice, which can grow in water-saturated conditions, could enable agricultural production to be maintained whilst r...
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Previous research has shown that natural gas (NG) leaks from residential appliances are common, affecting greenhouse gas emission inventories and indoor air quality. To study these implications, we collected and analyzed 587 unburned NG samples from 481 residences over 17 North American cities for hydrocarbons, hazardous air pollutants, and organos...
Article
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Gas and propane stoves emit nitrogen dioxide (NO 2 ) pollution indoors, but the exposures of different U.S. demographic groups are unknown. We estimate NO 2 exposure and health consequences using emissions and concentration measurements from >100 homes, a room-specific indoor air quality model, epidemiological risk parameters, and statistical sampl...
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U.S. rice paddies, critical for food security, are increasingly contributing to non‐CO2 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions like methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O). Yet, the full assessment of GHG balance, considering trade‐offs between soil organic carbon (SOC) change and non‐CO2 GHG emissions, is lacking. Integrating an improved agroecosystem model...
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Climate warming is expected to increase global methane (CH 4 ) emissions from wetland ecosystems. Although in situ eddy covariance (EC) measurements at ecosystem scales can potentially detect CH 4 flux changes, most EC systems have only a few years of data collected, so temporal trends in CH 4 remain uncertain. Here, we use established drivers to h...
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In February 2023, the sea-ice extent around Antarctica dropped to 1.79×106 km2, setting a satellite-era record low for the second straight year. Recent records stress the need for further research into the factors behind record-breaking Antarctic sea-ice anomalies. By influencing the circumpolar westerly winds, the stratospheric polar vortex has pl...
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Climate, technologies, and socio-economic changes will influence future building energy use in cities. However, current low-resolution regional and state-level analyses are insufficient to reliably assist city-level decision-making. Here we estimate mid-century hourly building energy consumption in 277 U.S. urban areas using a bottom-up approach. T...
Preprint
Full-text available
The U.S. rice paddy systems play an increasingly vital role in ensuring food security, which also contribute massive anthropogenic non-CO2 (CH4 and N2O) greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions with expanding cultivation area. Yet, the full assessment of GHG balance, considering trade-offs between soil organic carbon (SOC) sequestration and non-CO2 GHG emiss...
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Wetlands are responsible for 20%–31% of global methane (CH4) emissions and account for a large source of uncertainty in the global CH4 budget. Data‐driven upscaling of CH4 fluxes from eddy covariance measurements can provide new and independent bottom‐up estimates of wetland CH4 emissions. Here, we develop a six‐predictor random forest upscaling mo...
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Exposure pathways to the carcinogen benzene are well-established from tobacco smoke, oil and gas development, refining, gasoline pumping, and gasoline and diesel combustion. Combustion has also been linked to the formation of nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, and formaldehyde indoors from gas stoves. To our knowledge, however, no research has quan...
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Satellites have consistently pointed to the Altiplano of the Atacama Desert as the place on Earth where the world’s highest surface irradiance occurs. This region, near the Tropic of Capricorn, is characterized by its high elevation, prevalent cloudless conditions, and relatively low concentrations of ozone, aerosols, and precipitable water. Aimed...
Preprint
Full-text available
By influencing the circumpolar westerly winds, the stratospheric polar vortex has played a major role in the Antarctic surface climate in recent decades. However, the footprint of the polar vortex variability in the year-to-year changes of the Antarctic sea ice cover remains obscured. Here, we combine satellite retrievals and reanalysis data to stu...
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Cities in the global south face dire climate impacts. It is in socioeconomically marginalized urban communities of the global south that the effects of climate change are felt most deeply. Santiago de Chile, a major mid-latitude Andean city of 7.7 million inhabitants, is already undergoing the so-called “climate penalty” as rising temperatures wors...
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The MODIS 8-day composite evapotranspiration (ET) product (MOD16A2) is widely used to study large-scale hydrological cycle and energy budgets. However, the MOD16A2 spatial resolution (500 m) is too coarse for local and regional water resource management in agricultural applications. In this study, we propose a Deep Neural Network (DNN)-based MOD16A...
Article
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Background: Transitional economies in Southeast Asia-a distinct group of developing countries-have experienced rapid urbanization in the past several decades due to the economic transition that fundamentally changed the function of their economies, societies and the environment. Myanmar, one of the least developed transitional economies in Southea...
Preprint
Full-text available
Landfills, one of the final destinations of all kinds of materials used by human beings, are vital for understanding the carbon cycle of cities. Global Methane Pledge at COP26 highlighted the significance of landfill, which was the third-largest source of methane emissions in the world. High temporal- and spatial-resolution datasets of landfill org...
Preprint
Full-text available
Reducing methane emissions is essential for mitigating global warming. To attribute methane emissions to their sources, a comprehensive dataset of methane source infrastructure is necessary. Recent advancements with deep learning on remotely sensed imagery have the potential to identify the locations and characteristics of methane sources, but ther...
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An emerging and pressing issue in China’s economic reform is the intensified conflict between arable land protection and the encroachment of urban development into fertile farmlands that threaten food security and urban sustainability. New policies were issued to encourage rural land circulation as an attempt to ensure urban development and a susta...
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Hydropower dams produce huge impacts on renewable energy production, water resources, and economic development, particularly in the Global South, where accelerated dam construction has made it a global hotspot. We do not fully understand the multiple impacts that dams have in the nearby areas from a global perspective, including the spatial differe...
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This paper synthesizes the contemporary challenges for the sustainability of the social-environmental system (SES) across a geographically, environmentally, and geopolitically diverse region – the Asian Drylands Belt (ADB). This region includes 18 political entities, covering 10.3% of global land area and 30% of total global drylands. At the presen...
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Natural gas stoves in >40 million U.S. residences release methane (CH4)─a potent greenhouse gas─through post-meter leaks and incomplete combustion. We quantified methane released in 53 homes during all phases of stove use: steady-state-off (appliance not in use), steady-state-on (during combustion), and transitory periods of ignition and extinguish...
Article
Time series of wetland methane fluxes measured by eddy covariance require gap-filling to estimate daily, seasonal , and annual emissions. Gap-filling methane fluxes is challenging because of high variability and complex responses to multiple drivers. To date, there is no widely established gap-filling standard for wetland methane fluxes, with regar...
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Full-text available
Integrating the dynamics and interconnections of natural and human system properties into a single measure would make it simpler to reliably and repeatedly assess and compare different social-environmental systems (SES). We propose a novel metric to assess the magnitudes and variations in SES dynamics by integrating longitudinal gross domestic prod...
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Surface albedo is an important forcing parameter that drives the radiative energy budget as it determines the fraction of the downwelling solar irradiance that the surface reflects. Here we report on ground-based measurements of the spectral albedo (350–2200 nm) carried out at 20 sites across a North–South transect of approximately 1300 km in the A...
Article
Full-text available
Methane (CH4) emissions from natural landscapes constitute roughly half of global CH4 contributions to the atmosphere, yet large uncertainties remain in the absolute magnitude and the seasonality of emission quantities and drivers. Eddy covariance (EC) measurements of CH4 flux are ideal for constraining ecosystem-scale CH4 emissions due to quasi-co...
Article
Full-text available
Large datasets of greenhouse gas and energy surface-atmosphere fluxes measured with the eddy-covariance technique (e.g., FLUXNET2015, AmeriFlux BASE) are widely used to benchmark models and remote-sensing products. This study addresses one of the major challenges facing model-data integration: To what spatial extent do flux measurements taken at in...
Article
Full-text available
While wetlands are the largest natural source of methane (CH4) to the atmosphere, they represent a large source of uncertainty in the global CH4 budget due to the complex biogeochemical controls on CH4 dynamics. Here we present, to our knowledge, the first multi‐site synthesis of how predictors of freshwater wetland CH4 fluxes (FCH4) vary across we...
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Full-text available
Cultural heritage sites and landscapes are intuitively connected in urban systems. Based on available databases of cultural landmarks, we selected three pairs of cities that are currently dominated by three contrasting religions (Catholic, Buddhist and emerging culture) to compare the long-term changes in cultural landmarks, to quantify their spati...
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Producing gridded electric power consumption (EPC) maps at a fine geographic scale is critical for rational deployment and effective utilization of electric power resources. Brightness of nighttime light (NTL) has been extensively adopted to evaluate the spatial patterns of EPC at multiple geographical scales. However, the blooming effect and satur...
Preprint
Full-text available
Surface energy partitioning directly connects to the urban heat island effect, which consequently changes regional climate, the health of the urban population, and anthropogenic energy use. In order to quantify land-atmosphere fluxes from urban areas and the impact of the level of intensity of development, we use seven site-years of land-atmosphere...
Preprint
Full-text available
Methane (CH4) emissions from natural landscapes constitute roughly half of global CH4 contributions to the atmosphere, yet large uncertainties remain in the absolute magnitude and the seasonality of emission quantities and drivers. Eddy covariance (EC) measurements of CH4 flux are ideal for constraining ecosystem-scale CH4 emissions, including thei...
Article
Full-text available
Evaporation (E) is a critical component of the water and energy budget in lake systems yet is challenging to quantify directly and continuously. We examined the magnitude and changes of E and its drivers over Lake Erie-the shallowest and most southern lake of the Laurentian Great Lakes. We deployed two eddy-covariance tower sites in the western Lak...
Article
Nighttime light imageries are widely used for mapping the gross domestic product (GDP) over large areas. However, nighttime light imagery is inappropriate to disaggregate agricultural GDP and inadequate to differentiate the GDP from the secondary and tertiary sectors. Points-of-interest, a kind of geospatial big data with geographic locations and t...
Article
Rapid urbanization and industrialization in China stimulated the great increase of energy consumption, which leads to drastic rise in the emission of anthropogenic waste heat. Anthropogenic heat emission (AHE) is a crucial component of urban energy budget and has direct implications for investigating urban climate and environment. However, reliable...
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Full-text available
To examine the spatial patterns of hydrological variations in the southern and northern East Asia Monsoonal (EAM) region on millennial time scales, as well as to investigate the relationship between hydrological changes and carbon accumulation in these regions with contrasting environmental backgrounds, we performed facies-based hydrological recons...
Article
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ContextAlbedo can be used to quantify ecosystem and landscape contributions to local and global climate. Such contributions are conventionally expressed as radiative forcing (RF) and global warming impact (GWI). We contextualize our results within landscape carbon production and storage to highlight the importance of changes in albedo for landscape...
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Lateral movements of materials and energy in coastal wetlands, due mainly to tidal activities, have been recognized as key processes in understanding the biogeochemical cycles of ecosystems. However, our understanding of the roles of lateral movement in shaping ecosystem functions remains limited. Here we quantified the effects of lateral sediment...
Chapter
The drylands region of Northwest China is an extensive, vulnerable environment and has experienced dynamic migration patterns along with dramatic urban expansion in the past six decades. This chapter assesses migration and urbanization of this region from the middle of the twentieth century until 2015, with a particular focus on the period followin...
Chapter
Full-text available
In this chapter, we provide an overview of the social-ecological systems (SES) in the Asian Drylands Belt (ADB), a vast geographical region composed of 17 independent countries and six administrative provinces of China. The ADB, which covers 15.4 million km² and is the home to more than 645 million people, has served as a major human migratory rout...
Article
Full-text available
Context The open and free access to Landsat and MODIS products have greatly promoted scientific investigations on spatiotemporal change in land mosaics and ecosystem functions at landscape to regional scales. Unfortunately, there is a major mismatch in spatial resolution between MODIS products at coarser resolution (≥ 250 m) and landscape structure...
Article
The construction of transportation corridors (such as roads) frequently disturbs and alters the natural disturbance regimes of ecosystems in many areas worldwide. In this study, by comparing the species richness, diversity, composition and soil among four ecotypes (non-road disturbance areas, road systems without ditches, road systems with large an...
Article
Ecological restoration programs (ERPs) have been conducted in China since 2000 to improve ecological conditions, particularly in the farming-pastoral ecotone of Northern China. Few have studied the effects of ERPs on landscape structure. Taking West Liaohe River Basin (WLRB) as a case study, we explored how landscape dynamics were altered before an...
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This paper proposes a framework for measuring compactness and urban green accessibility in a high-density transit-oriented metropolis and uses Taipei City and its surrounding outskirts, New Taipei City, as a case to illustrate the measurement framework. Two indices, urban compactness index (UCI) and urban green accessibility index (UGAI), are devel...
Article
Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia, has experienced unprecedented urbanization following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Lack in housing supply has led to an expansion of informal settlements, mostly in the form of Gers-portable tents used by nomads in Mongolian Plateau. These settlements now host approximately 45% of Ulaanbaatar's total popula...
Article
The biomass of the subtropical forests of China is an important component of the global carbon cycle. Recently, several above ground biomass (AGB) maps have been produced using a variety of approaches to assess the carbon stock of the subtropical forest in China. However, due to the lack of reliable ground observations and the limitations of AGB ma...
Preprint
Based on nighttime photos taken by the Landsat satellite system, the authors studied urbanization processes in Siberia from 1992 to 2012. Changes in the illumination of urban areas correspond to recessions and booms in economic activity. Despite a noticeable decrease in the population of Siberia during this period, the large administrative centers—...